There is Still a Tremendous Ongoing Need for Hi-Tech Talent
Frank Johnson, Hewitt Associates, Shanghai
So event with lay-offs and closures, most dotcom veterans needn’t worry about job prospects, say Maneck Mohan of Recruit.net in Hong Kong, which specializes in hi-tech recruiting. ”The banks, the Circos and Microsoft of the region, they just can’t get the head count they need of tech talent.”
Many of these companies are filling vacancies by recruiting from countries like India and the Philippines, which has caused a brain drain. To keep hi-tech talent at home, companies in India and the Philippines in particular have had to try to match overseas salaries, say Hewitt. So it’s no surprise that both gave out some of the highest average base salary increase in the region – between 12% and 15% in India and 13.8% in Philippines.
That’s in contrast to Asia’s more developed economies, like Australia, Japan and Hong Kong, where salaries rose between 3% and 4.4%. Of course, there is still no comparison in the base salaries of IT professionals in India and in Philippines and that of their counterparts in development countries, but they’re fast catching up. “We know that talent has global mobility, “says Johnson. “We may soon see more regional salary and job structure where they pay differential between countries either disappears or is minimal.
But problems don’t end with hiring. Retention is also headache for the regions companies as workers, especially highly qualified ones, increasingly hop from job to job. Hewitt found that in all the countries is surveyed, more than half of the companies were concerned about keeping qualified workers. In Singapore, 91% responsed that retaining key talent was a problem.
However, the overwhelming demand for hi-tech workers has led to a polarization of the job market – tech –savvy staff are receiving huge pay rises while manual and manufacturing workers are receiving even less than before. A recent study by Hong Kong’s Confederation of Trade Unions showed that workers in several industries, including textiles and printing, are earning less in real terms than two year ago.
The trend looks set to continue this year. Even with the U.S. economy slowing and profit for hi-tech powerhouses leveling off, companies in Asia plan to hire even more IT staff in the next six to 12 months. “There are no signs that companies will slow down their acquisition of talent this year,” says Joshua Sparks, director of IT recruitment at headhunter Robert Walter in Melbourne. “Quite the opposite – as long as demand outstrips supply, companies are going to snap up top talent and pay prettily for it.”
(By Suh-Kyung Yoon, in www.feer.com Jan 25 2001, page 70)
Re-publish by. www.tradinginfoceo.blogspot.com , March 3, 2008
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